Eyes Not Sold is a journal of opinion on financial markets, current events, and almost anything else that comes to mind. John Borden is a generalist whose written ideas, observations, and comments are his own and may not be correct. That's a disclaimer, and hopefully anything provocative or boring, informative or uninformed, amusing or depressing, and insightful or superficial is covered.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Trump adds to his campaign staff

It had seemed like Paul Manafort was the perfect choice for a Donald Trump campaign manager. He lives in Trump Tower, albeit quite a few floors below Trump, he played some role in the Republican campaigns of Ford, Reagan, and the senior Bush, and more recently had spent more than five years as political adviser to the oligarch, Putin ally, and looter of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych until his ouster. Manafort was well known and without scruples. To add to that, his career included periods advising the rapacious dictators Ferdinand Marcos of the Phillipines and Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo. He also looked and sounded like a respectable man. What more could Trump ask for?

He wanted more firepower for his strange campaign. Roger Ailes, fresh off his firing at Fox, is now advising him on the coming debates, Stephen Bannon, executive chairman, or some such title, of Breitbart News joins the team with a reputation as a pit bull of anti-establishment political opinions and conspiracy theories, and Kellyanne Conway, a pollster and publicist who has a close working relationship with Robert Mercer, the hedge fund billionare who was primary financier of the Ted Cruz campaign and whose political beliefs move into the bizarre side of the extreme right wing. How will this work?

It seems that Trump has decided to double down on his erratic behavior and his attacks on anyone who is not on board his runaway train. Is this campaign going to just get more ugly, and become more of an attack on the U.S. political system, that is democracy? In this unusual and unpredictable political year, nothing seems certain.